Maintain Clients’ Trust with Stronger Quality Management

─Quality Management Department, CTCI Corporation

Over the years, CTCI Group has made efforts to achieve the vision as “The Most Reliable Global Engineering Services Provider” by delivering numerous challenging projects all over the world. We highly value clients’ opinions because they serve as the foundation for CTCI’s project improvement. Their opinions have helped us identify and solve the problems well before they raise grievances, which has enhanced the effectiveness of project executions and ultimately helped us win their trust. 

This article introduces the institutional and training aspects of CTCI’s continuous effort in refining quality management mechanisms and employee competency. Measures taken include “continue to improve Lessons & Learned management mechanisms,” “enhance the effectiveness of project quality audits,” “continue to improve intellectual property protection mechanisms,” and “enhance the effectiveness of ‘semi-annual briefing sessions on regulations/procedures updates.’”

Continue to Improve Lessons & Learned Management Mechanisms

For CTCI, the experiences we gain in every project are valuable resources to help us improve our capabilities. We appreciate feedbacks from customers, and use the experiences our colleagues gained from project execution to streamline our operations. To encourage our colleagues to share their project experiences, we keep improving the Lessons & Learned (L&L) process by institutionalizing the proposal and reward mechanism to prevent the same problem from happening again. In addition, we established the L&L review committee, directly overseen by the top management, to encourage colleagues to propose empirical L&L cases through multiple channels. The secretariat would first gather and screen the proposals for further routine proposal reviews. When a proposal is deemed as “individual case,” communications or trainings will be geared towards relevant departments. If a proposal is deemed as “general case,” then we would review the current mechanisms and make necessary revisions on the existing regulations or procedures. Moreover, as an incentive for sharing, if the proposal leads to the making of new regulations or procedures, or the revision of existing regulations or procedures, then we would reward the colleague who made such proposal.

Enhance the Effectiveness of Project Quality Audits

1. Readjust project quality audit frequency 

In order to enhance the effectiveness of quality audits and to detect project quality issues in advance, we have readjusted the frequency of project quality audits based on project size, characteristics, and schedule. The timing of audit now becomes more in line with the actual needs of project implementation compared to previous audits, which were carried out on a seasonal basis. This ensures that significant control points at each phase can be checked, and problems can be spotted timely. Otherwise, project quality audit would become a mere formality.

2. Refine project audit checklist

To help auditors draw up audit plans and understand the key points for auditing, as well as detect project quality issues in advance, we have developed a set of corporate regulations and procedures and significant control points at each phase.  We would review the non-conformities found during project audits and conduct root causes analysis, as well as effectively collect necessary information to serve as references for subsequent corporate-level quality improvement.

Continue to Improve the Intellectual Property Protection Mechanisms

As intellectual property (IP) protection becomes ever more important, reliable IP protection becomes a key in winning clients’ trust. From 2017 to 2018, CTCI had comprehensively reviewed and improved IP protection management mechanisms, adopting measures such as policies on confidentiality and intellectual property rights, non-disclosure agreement (NDA), and confidential document controls. So far, we have implemented IP management and control for two years, and continue to refine and improve the mechanism this year (2020) by addressing the problems discovered during internal audits and project audits, as well as by addressing difficulties met by various units during implementation. Actions taken in 2020 include the following:

1. A promotional video introducing “Letter of Undertaking to CTCI CORPORATION’s Policies on Confidentiality and Intellectual Property Rights” for new recruits:

CTCI employees are required to sign the “Letter of Undertaking to CTCI CORPORATION’s Policies on Confidentiality and Intellectual Property Rights” upon joining CTCI. To avoid possible misunderstandings with regard to the content, CTCI has rolled out an online course that goes through each commitment clause, providing specific examples on measures that consist violation of the clauses. That way, all colleagues will clearly understand their rights, responsibilities and obligations, thus honoring their commitments to confidentiality.

2. Formulate/Revise IP-related SOPs: 

With an IP management and control mechanism in place for two years now, CTCI has found that some mechanisms and SOPs are far from being perfect and there is room for improvement. The Quality Management Department has therefore reviewed and revised relevant SOPs by working with Project Departments and the Legal Department. In addition, each division/department is required to check their confidential documents list to refine our management mechanism. Moreover, to ensure the agreements between CTCI and external bodies (clients or vendors) can be effectively managed and implemented, CTCI has established a group non-disclosure agreement (NDA) control process managed by IT system, which features NDA initiation, review, negotiation, approval, document uploading, and data maintenance. To facilitate implementation by all CTCI companies, such control mechanism and related operation details are also stipulated in the “Group NDA Management Regulations.” 

Enhance the Effectiveness of “Semi-Annual Briefing Sessions on Regulations/Procedures Updates”

Since August 2017, CTCI has carried out semi-annual briefing sessions on regulations/procedures updates. To ensure our colleagues can better learn from these session courses, we have introduced a number of improvement measures in 2019, which are the following:

1. Improve course material quality

To make better course materials, all course materials are reviewed and confirmed by the top management, while seminar lecturers are served by experienced senior personnel. The Quality Management Department also holds “briefing sessions on the development of course materials” that provide templates and guidelines for lecturers to ensure courses are accurately and effectively delivered to convey the key points.

2. Improve online course quality

CTCI has recorded all compulsory courses as e-learning course videos so that CTCI colleagues can take them whenever they want, and wherever they are. Since colleagues are busy and do not have too much learning time, 2-hour long courses are cut down to about 15-minutes short clips featuring different themes, allowing colleagues to be able to complete their trainings and tests during their limited free time.

3. Training becomes compulsory for more people

To ensure training effectiveness, CTCI has increased the scope of staff that are required to attend “Semi-Annual Briefing Sessions on Regulations/Procedures Updates.” Previously, only Division/Department heads and project key members needed to attend, but now the scope also includes other front line project members from engineering, procurement, and construction divisions. These short films are also uploaded to CTCI University, an online course platform, so that other colleagues can access the materials and become more aware of the company procedures and regulations.

After 41 years of making, CTCI has become Taiwan’s leading engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services provider and one of the top 100 in the world. As global engineering market becomes ever more competitive, CTCI is facing even tougher engineering challenges, stronger competitors, more demanding customers, and a constantly changing environment. To survive and pursue sustainable development, we are bound to locate the problems, deal with them squarely, and keep improving our operations. In the days to come, CTCI will continue to maintain clients’ trust with stronger management mechanisms, so that we can provide “The Most Reliable Global Engineering Services.”